1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method for producing rod lenses each of which includes a light guiding element and a lens element, and also relates to such a rod lens, and to an array arrangement of such rod lenses.
2. Description of Related Art
Rod lenses have been known and comprise an elongated light guiding element and a lens element on at least one end of the light guiding element. Such rod lenses have been produced from glass blocks or preforms by grinding and polishing, or by melting such preforms in a mold and deforming them by compression. Manufacturing thereof in a molding process is also known (US 2010/327470 A).
The prior art methods suffer from quite high production costs. Moreover, the known methods are not suitable for producing a housing such as it is required for many applications of the rod lens at the same time when producing the rod lens.